Historical maps reveal how this enigmatic structure evolved in the eyes of surveyors: appearing as a circular enclosure about 45 metres across on the 1842 Ordnance Survey map, then morphing into a rectangular feature surrounded by a water-filled ditch on the 1905 edition, and finally depicted as an oval area defined by two earthen banks with a fosse between them on the 1936 survey.

Until its destruction around 1977, the site consisted of an earthen bank overgrown with trees and bushes, separated from a lower outer bank by a waterlogged ditch; a classic defensive arrangement typical of Anglo-Norman settlements in medieval Ireland. Local residents remember these features before modern agriculture claimed them, leaving only subtle traces in the landscape. Today, visitors to this east-facing pasture slope can still make out the ghost of the past: an oval area measuring 43.5 metres east to west and 34 metres north to south, its boundary marked by a shallow depression just 20 centimetres deep where the old fosse once lay.

The site’s true form emerges most clearly from above, where aerial photography captures what the ground obscures. In these images, taken by the Geological Survey of Ireland, the moated site appears as a cropmark revealing a subrectangular enclosure with its original defensive banks and ditches, along with a faint linear feature extending eastward from the outer bank; possibly the remains of an access route or associated structure. Though the earthworks themselves have vanished, differential growth in the vegetation continues to trace the medieval boundaries, ensuring this piece of Cork’s Norman heritage remains readable in the landscape for those who know how to look.